about a successful manager who came up through the ranks as a player, married a beautiful Czech model, but now, in his mid-40s, he realises he has nothing in common with his wife, nor any of the people he continues to associate with. That would be good, wouldn't it.

for a smaller club especially because you've got a lot of scope for fun with it. Like preparing for a big cup game, or checking what the fans are saying about you online and replying back. summat to do with twitter. Someone doing a 'club in the community' scheme and shooting an apprentice, the usual stuff.

solely feature people shouting profanity into mobile telephones, whilst in a verity of locations. In the end they get the star player they want and he immediately falls out with the manager and spends most of the season on the bench.

is that the writers/producers inevitably feel they have to target the LADs in the PUBs, they being the only ones who watch football, and therefore whatever the original pitch was it becomes a sub-Packet of Crisps string of jokes about the offside rule, balls and wags. Which is a shame, because it's a rich, virtually-beyond-parody world which has incredible amounts of opportunity for sharp satire.

But is there the demand for a high brow football programme? Politics obviously lends itself to intelligent comedy, but football? Idk how big the crossover there is... and I guess that's why nothing has been made.

there'd be loads of cross-over appeal. Plenty of lads absolutely love cringe-y British character parody like Partridge, and it's a subject that most of them are comfortable being nerds about anyway. Meanwhile if it wasn't actually about what happens on the pitch lots of people who like the Thick of It would probably enjoy it.

Based on the guy who does press for my club. Constantly banging on about how it's only official when it's on his personal twitter account, which is *first and fastest* with the news but will confirm things days after they actually happen.

Once lead to the Barnsley official site confirming one of our signings before he did as we were playing them at the weekend

The obvious route is to end a series with a relegation/promotion/play off battle.

However, I think a really good story arc could be made by the team being, at the end of the season, mid-table with nothing to play for, but having to play a game which is very important for the other team. There must be quite a lot of comedy and tragedy in being the team that relegates another club...

I have experience of administrators in a different line of business (bankrupt shops) and the idiot things they try to do to generate petty cash is hilarious (in hindsight - didn't like having to manufacture makeshift poster ads for used safety shoes at the time)

My only advice for this idea is to try not to make many football jokes. The reason the Thick of It works for me is because the context is politics, but there are almost no jokes that only someone who follows politics would 'get'

who thinks he's Bielsa and puts his non-league players through all these rigorous avant-garde training methods.

There could be an episode centred around a disastrous team-building paintball incident or something. I agree that the players should only be in the periphery. Like, you obviously see them when they sign contracts and get into trouble and stuff but you never get to know about their characters, they're just there.

Part of what makes The Thick Of It (or Twenty Twelve for that matter) work is that the people portrayed think that they're actually doing an important job, and their incompetance and crassness is thrown into relief by this contrast.

Not sure that the back-room staff at a lower league football club would work quite as well for that reason.

The presenters and staff on a rolling football TV or radio station, however, definitely have egos that would provide for Larry Sanders-esque comedy gold. A behind the scenes-style comedy based around a thinly-veiled Talksport, for example, or a Soccer Saturday, has potential.
(if that idea hasn't been done before)

I mean, the actual reality and what the characters think will be different. See Phoenix Nights for example. They weren't doing an important job in the grand scheme of things but in their little world it was huge. Either way it could be a laugh.

I guess that's where the humour would come from in this case, the absurdity of holding something so insignificant in such high esteem.

Many of the people who work at clubs like that are similar. I've known a few players and coaches for lower league (League 1+2) clubs, and they live a pretty bizzare life. They drive their sports cars around and chat up girls as if they're movie stars, and then spend their days training on a muddy pitch with broken nets next to a dual carriageway and business park. In any other profession what they do wouldn't be considered glamorous, but football provides an extreme level of ludicrousness perfect for a comedy show.

but my sister dated a lower league footballer for about 4 years and we used to go to all the games (Ebbsfleet mainly, when they were owned by that stupid website.) Subsequently got to know some of the coaches and other players and see a little bit how the club was run (a huge clusterfuck, basically). Helped out with their match-day programme for work experience once. Not exactly the deepest reservoir of non-league knowledge, but have a few funny stories!

And similar to my own idea for a Thick of It style sitcom based in a regional newspaper office. There are so many good anecdotes and characters to play with. I know there was Drop the Dead Donkey but it doesn't quite match what I was thinking.

It was about a youth team, who through an administrative error at the FA, got given a place in the Intertoto Cup and through a series of mishaps and blunders bodged their way to the final vs Paris Saint Germain. It had some awful acting but was quite hilarious.

Same sort of premise. They had a speccy kid called Ohbert who'd field at long-off, listen to his Walkman during games, and who would accidentally end up making the winning runs / make the winning run-out in ridiculous ways.

think there is room for a really viscous satire in a small club being bought by rich owners, something quite slapstick silly would be easier, something really cutting of The Thick of It's vein would be great.

being an AFC Bournemouth fan is a rich hub of ridiculous sitcom laughs at the moment. The completely faceless Russian oligarch co-chairman and his partner, the drunken seven time bankrupt builder who does his own half time team talks when on the sauce. HE'S IN THE FUCKING CHANGING ROOM AGAIN, OH JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, HE'S DOING HIS CHURCHILL SPEECH